GUEST EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
Pervasive Computing
in Sports Technologies
S
port is an extremely exciting field in
which to apply our craft. Results over
the last decade of research on applying
ubiquitous computing technologies to
enhance sports are indeed encouraging.
Researchers have learned a great deal about sensors
and how to embed them in everyday objects. For
example, accelerometers, gyroscopes, microphones, and camEd H. Chi
eras all lend themselves nicely to
Palo Alto Research Center
a range of sports applications.
Gaetano Borriello
Computer vision algorithms are
University of Washington
enabling researchers to analyze
not only a single player’s motions
Guerney Hunt
but also the patterns of a group
IBM
of players simultaneously.
Nigel Davies
Our goals in organizing this
Lancaster University
issue are to encourage and highlight new research in this emerging area and to pique everyone’s
interest in understanding how technology can be
applied to sports. Indeed, other efforts to do this
exist. For example, in September, a pioneering
workshop at the UbiComp ’05 conference (http://
ubicomp.org/ubicomp2005/calls/callworkshops.
shtml), organized by Intel researchers Elizabeth
Goodman, Brooke Foucault, and Sunny Consolvo, will examine various issues of applying
technology in sports. This workshop is certainly
timely, coinciding nicely with this special issue.
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PERVASIVE computing
The growing interest in and demand for better
sports technologies have spawned a wide variety
of new research.
Important trends and implications
Pervasive computing researchers are studying
three areas of sports technologies: athletic performance, leisure and entertainment, and how
technology could affect the rules of the game.
Improving sports performance and learning
The history of sports performance studies is littered with success stories. For example, instruments have been built into golf clubs to offer
golfers a computer analysis of their swing,1 and
runners use heart rate monitors to track their
training progress. Researchers continue to innovate, creating new ways to understand human
performance in sports. For example, Joan Vickers has been examining neuromotor psychology
by studying the gaze of athletes while they perform specific sport skills using helmet-mounted
eyetrackers.2
Sports technology, of course, isn’t limited to
enhancing performance; it potentially extends into
rehabilitation and injury prevention. For example,
in a recent IEEE Spectrum article, high-tech prostheses enabled double-leg amputee Oscar Pistorius
to run nearly as fast as able-bodied athletes, raising the question regarding whether the Olympics
Published by the IEEE CS and IEEE ComSoc ■ 1536-1268/05/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE
will allow athletes with running prostheses to compete.3
Almost any sport could benefit from
equipment enhancements as well as novel
measurement and analysis of athletes’ performance. From popular sports such as
golf, baseball, and basketball to extreme
sports such as snowboarding, motocross
racing, and rock climbing, athletes can all
gain from a better understanding of their
muscle movements, orientation, and heart
rate response. The research question here
isn’t to instrument everything on the
human body but rather to understand
what the most appropriate sensors are
and how they should be used. Being
“appropriate” here means enhancing
players so that they want to use sensors
in their training, enabling unobtrusive
instrumentation so that coaches can analyze the best data available, and cooperating with judges so that they make good,
socially acceptable calls on the field.
Leisure and entertainment
Sports are also closely tied to the availability of leisure time and the desire for
entertainment. Using technology in sports
entertainment offers two possibilities. The
first is in participatory games. For example, game arcades have already incorporated various technologies into soccer
balls, golf clubs, baseball bats, motorcycles, and boxing gloves to make sports
games more entertaining. Companies
such as Laser Quest are creating innovative new games with laser tag equipment,
such as the team mission game of protecting the queen bee (www.laserquest.
com/pages/about/LQ_About.html?index
=about). Laser tag games can be every bit
as exhausting as professional sports. As
another example, fitness clubs have
started to incorporate video games in
their exercise equipment. For example,
in the mid-1990s, Life Fitness connected
its Lifecycle to a Super Nintendo (www.
gamersgraveyard.com/repository/snes/
peripherals/exertainment.html). The faster
you pedaled, the faster your counterpart
on the video game screen went. This kind
of equipment encourages users to exercise harder.
JULY–SEPTEMBER 2005
The second possibility is to use technology to enhance spectators’ enjoyment. Major tennis tournaments now
measure the speed of serves, for example, to satisfy spectators’ curiosity about
what it might be like to receive such
serves. On the other hand, TV viewers
rejected the use of highlighted trails of
hockey pucks during live broadcasts of
National Hockey League games (www.
embedded.com/97/inc9603.htm). The
pucks were instrumented with 20
disk wheels in cycling events after some
wrangling in 1984.) Other controversial
technologies include the Cyclops tennis
line-calling system (discussed in this issue
in Ed Chi’s article). In most cases, sports’
governing bodies are reluctant to adopt
new equipment technologies and standards. Indeed, in many cases, the rules
themselves must be changed to accommodate new technology.
Occasionally, however, governing bodies can themselves be the catalyst for
The research question here isn’t to instrument
everything on the human body but rather to
understand what the most appropriate sensors
are and how they should be used.
infrared emitters, and sensors around the
rink picked up the infrared signals to
track them. Fans hated the trails, so TV
broadcasters eventually pulled the trails
out of their live coverage of the games.
How to design technology for spectator
enjoyment has been less than clear. The
key appears to be balancing tradition,
distraction, and satisfaction of spectator
curiosity. Spectators enjoy total immersion in watching live sports, so the technologies we introduce must assist in this
immersion rather than disrupt it.
Interaction with sports authorities
A technology’s acceptance not only
involves spectators but also the sports’
governing bodies. The US Golf Association heavily regulates the modification
of golf balls, clubs, and other equipment.
The so-called “dimple wars” in the
1970s ignited quite a controversy about
such equipment; people even feared that
“old” golf courses would become obsolete because balls were traveling much
further than before due to new ball
design.1 As another example from the
past, bicycle design modifications have
been severely restricted, with several
newer, fast recumbent-type designs
rejected for international competition.4
(Cycling federation officials did allow
change. In a rule change in May, for
example, the World Taekwondo Federation reduced the number of scoring judges
required around the competition ring
from four to two when the competition
includes the new force-sensing electronic
chest protectors. Interestingly, these new
chest protectors aren’t even on the market
yet, so the governing organization is one
step ahead of the technologists. (See Chi’s
related article in this issue.)
In this issue
We’ve chosen four articles for this issue.
First, Gertjan Wijnalda, Steffen Pauws,
Fabio Vignoli, and Heiner Stuckenschmidt present a research product for
personalizing music selections based on
heart rate monitors and MP3 players. The
idea is both simple and elegant. By monitoring runners’ heart rates before, during, and after exercise, the IM4Sports
system can construct unique personal
training programs automatically. The
device helps users select songs that fit their
training programs and can dynamically
change playback to guide the runners.
During training, it can modify the tempo
to suit the runner’s speed. This research
has immediate marketplace appeal by
making training programs not only more
enjoyable but also more effective.
PERVASIVE computing
23
SPORTS TECHNOLOGIES
the
In the sec-
AUTHORS
Ed H. Chi is a senior research scientist at Palo Alto Research Center’s User Interface
Research Group. His research interests are in user interface software systems. He
received his PhD in computer science from the University of Minnesota and is a
senior member of the IEEE. Contact him at PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CA
94304; echi@parc.com.
Gaetano Borriello is a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. He is on partial leave to direct the Intel Research Seattle Laboratory. His research interests include location-based systems, sensor-based inferencing,
and tagging objects with passive and active tags. He serves on the IEEE Pervasive
Computing editorial board. Contact him at the Dept. of Computer Science and Eng.,
Univ. of Washington, Campus Box 352350, Seattle, WA 98195; gaetano@cs.
washington.edu; www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gaetano.
Guerney Hunt is a research staff member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. His
research interests include scaling technologies, network systems, systems architecture,
operating systems, fault tolerance, distributed systems, and ubiquitous computing. He
received his PhD in computer science from Cornell University. He serves on the IEEE
Pervasive Computing editorial board. Contact him at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center,
GN-D02, 30 Saw Mill River Rd., Hawthorne, NY 10532; gdhh@us.ibm.com.
Nigel Davies is a professor of computer science at Lancaster University and an
adjunct associate professor of computer science at the University of Arizona. His
research interests include systems support for mobile and pervasive computing. He
focuses in particular on the challenges of creating deployable mobile and ubiquitous
computing systems that can be used and evaluated “in the wild.” He’s an associate
editor of IEEE Pervasive Computing. Contact him at the Computing Dept., InfoLab 21,
South Dr., Lancaster Univ., Lancaster, LA1 4WA UK; nigel@comp.lancs.ac.uk.
ond article, Michael Beetz, Bernhard
Kirchlechner, and Martin Lames present
a novel system developed at Fraunhofer
Institute for Integrated Circuits for tracking not only the soccer ball on the field
but also the players.5 Coin-sized microwave transmitters that are embedded in
the ball and players’ shin guards broadcast signals to receivers placed on floodlight masts and sidelines. A central computer calculates the exact location from
these pulsed signals, much like how global
positioning systems work. By analyzing
game data and patterns, the authors hope
to enhance coaching, spectators’ enjoyment, and everyone’s understanding of
game strategy. With balls and players
24
PERVASIVE computing
instrumented, spectators and coaches will
be able to know a shot’s speed, whether
the ball passed the goal line, and who ran
the fastest.
The last two articles present wearable
devices. Florian Michahelles and Bernt
Schiele apply wearable sensors to downhill skiing. By embedding various sensors
on clothing and ski boots, the system
reveals information about the athlete’s
motions, including forces, rotations, and
accelerations. This is a huge improvement over the quality of data that previously could only be partially obtained
from video analysis. By working with
trainers and former World Cup coaches,
the authors are developing data visual-
ization software that presents measured
sensor data alongside the reference video.
Finally, guest editor Ed Chi, a Taekwondo black belt and referee, analyzes
the criteria for the social acceptance of
sports technology by players, coaches,
and sports organizations. Working with
the Stanford Taekwondo Program and
the Silicon Valley startup company
Impact Measurements, he developed a
prototype system in which sensors were
embedded into wearable chest protectors for sparring matches. The article discusses the technical challenges involved
and how the system affects the judging of
the match. In applying an evaluation
framework for ubiquitous computing
technology developed by Jean Scholtz
and Sunny Consolvo, he notes that several evaluation metrics are important,
including the technology’s accuracy and
predictability; players’, coaches’, and
judges’ awareness of the system’s technical capabilities; the amount of behavior
changes and distraction to the players;
and the amount of social resistance to
changes in the game’s rules or structure.
As these articles show, these technologies have enormous implications.
They will increasingly help runners train
more efficiently, soccer coaches better
understand their athletes’ performance,
ski trainers design better programs for
learning precise muscle movements, and
judges score Taekwondo matches more
accurately.
A
s research and discussion carry
forward, more and more
novel pervasive technologies
will be introduced. New uses
for embedded sensors will expand our
understanding of how to use them in different situations while gaining social
acceptance.
One of our hopes is that technology
will make sports more entertaining for
players and encourage the general pubwww.computer.org/pervasive
lic to exercise more. As one example, the
interactive video game “Dance Dance
Revolution” involves players actually
dancing on a game mat, so it clearly
burns more calories than a typical, sedentary game.
In extreme cases, some players believe
changes to sports equipment might actually alter the ideal body type for a sport.
We must understand how a particular
technology affects the game and whether
it enhances athlete performance at the
expense of creative expression. Indeed,
in introducing new technology into a
sport, there’s a fine balance between
completely eliminating the human factor in competition and enhancing the
expression of fitness and technique.
REFERENCES
1. A.S. Akins, “Golfers Tee Off into the
Future,” The Futurist, Mar.–Apr. 1994, pp.
39–42, http://web.media.mit.edu/~intille/st/
golfers.html.
2. J. Vickers, “Quiet-Eye Technique Improves
Sport Performance,” Kinesiology, Univ.
of Calgary, www.kin.ucalgary.ca/2002/
research/quieteye.asp.
3. M. Hood, “Running against the Wind,”
IEEE Spectrum, June 2005, pp. 13–14;
www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/
resource/jun05/0605nspo.html.
4. D. Bjerklie, “High-Tech Olympians,” Technology Rev., Jan. 1993, pp. 22–30.
5. E. Guizzo, “Bugged Balls for Tough Calls,”
IEEE Spectrum Online, June 2005, www.
spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/
jun05/0605nball.html.
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